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Baneblade

"All Guardsmen! FOLLOW ME TO GLORY!!"

A super-heavy tank forged on Mars itself, the Baneblade is the oldest tank still in the Imperial Guard arsenal. It is equipped with a battle cannon paired with a coaxial autocannon, a Demolisher cannon, 3 twin-linked heavy bolters, and 2 lascannons. The Baneblade can withstand an incredible amount of punishment, especially with a Techpriest Enginseer repairing the vehicle during combat.

Tactics

The Baneblade is arguably the best assault vehicle in the game, surpassing even the NecronRestored Monolith in its ability to make things go boom. While the Battle Cannon is turreted and can move to fire in 360 in a relatively good response time, it's secondary cannon, the Demolisher Cannon, can not. It is therefore best, not surprisingly, to keep the Baneblade pointed at what you want it to make go boom (The Demolisher cannon has approximately double the firepower of the battle cannon, and even more knockback). Sporting 11 barrels of destructive fury (each set of heavy bolters has two barrels), it is quite capable of handling most vehicle threats itself. However, it is by nature a strong bullet magnet, so an escort of Leman Russ tanks, Kasrkin, and other units is usually necessary to ward off threatening enemy units. It is also wise to keep your Baneblade at a medium distance from the enemy, to make good use of all 11 barrels the Baneblade sports. If the enemy gets to close to the Baneblade, it will only be able to fire a fraction of its weapons.

The Baneblade has two main disadvantages, the first one being its size. If you have an extremely crowded base, you may actually have to scuttle a building or two to even get this behemoth out of your base. Also, it can be extremely unwieldy on the more constricted maps, especially when accompanied by a large army. In this situation, it can also be very easily trapped and isolated by melee units.

The second main disadvantage is that its two strongest weapons do friendly fire, which make it rather unsuitable at supporting your infantry if the enemy has closed into melee with them.

Finally, be especially wary of enemies with vehicle disabling abilities such as EMP Grenades or the Sabotage, as the Baneblade is the ultimate unit to use these skills on and can turn your huge investment into a waste of time and an obstruction for long periods if your enemy keeps using them.

Twin Heavy Bolter

There are two sponson Twin Heavy Bolters on the Baneblade, one on either side of the vehicle, and a third mounted directly on the hull next to the Demolisher cannon. They have been listed here once because the values are similar for all three.